The Good Earth Literary Analysis Paper

        Lotus makes Wang Lung feel happy and special at first. “And he ate and drank of his love and he was satisfied.”(Buck, 214). Wang Lung is happy and satisfied for a while, but when Lotus starts complaining and costing Wang Lung large sums of money with all the delicacies of food and jewelry, Wang Lung is turned off. “Now and I have no one but you and I have no friends...and I have no one.”(Buck, 225). Lotus often complains which causes Wang Lung to grow weary of her, for she befriends the wife of Wang Lung’s uncle, whom Wang Lung despises.

        O-Lan bears three sons for Wang Lung. “Well, and if I am ugly, still I have borne a son; although I am but a slave there is still a son in my house.”(Buck, 286). This ability to bear sons        allows women in Chinese culture to gain social status and respect. Lotus does not ever bear sons for Wang Lung. “I will not hear my children cursed... not by you who have no son in your womb for any man.”(Buck, 225). Lotus is not as perfect as Wang Lung first thought when he first met her, for she never bears him any sons.

        O-Lan is faithful and obedient throughout her life to Wang Lung. “He fell to thinking of his life and how O-Lan had been the first woman he had known and how she had been a faithful servant beside him.”(Buck, 268). This plain, ugly woman, as Wang Lung put it when they were first married, was better than she had seemed. Lotus feels disappointed when Wang Lung no longer wants her to pleasure him. “If I had known that in short year you could look at me and not see me, I would have stayed in the tea house.”(Buck, 237). Lotus could not have cared less about being faithful to Wang Lung.

Though they both loved Wang Lung, O-Lan and Lotus never came to peace with each other. This might have been a result of them being just about as unlike as two can be. This is one of the many negative effects of polygamy.